House Narrowly Rejects Air Safety Bill After Pentagon Opposition

NY Times - mar, 02/24/2026 - 17:53
A move to swiftly pass the bill failed by a single vote. It would have required aircraft to carry technology that officials said might have prevented a midair collision near Washington last year.

Blizzard Causes Major Airport Delays and Cancellations: What Travelers Should Know

NY Times - mar, 02/24/2026 - 17:34
As major hubs in the Northeast dig out from up to three feet of snow, it could be days before some travelers get moving. Here’s where things stand.

Meta AI Security Researcher Said an OpenClaw Agent Ran Amok on Her Inbox

SlashDot - mar, 02/24/2026 - 17:30
Meta AI security researcher Summer Yue posted a now-viral account on X describing how an OpenClaw agent she had tasked with sorting through her overstuffed email inbox went rogue, deleting messages in what she called a "speed run" while ignoring her repeated commands from her phone to stop. "I had to RUN to my Mac mini like I was defusing a bomb," Yue wrote, sharing screenshots of the ignored stop prompts as proof. Yue said she had previously tested the agent on a smaller "toy" inbox where it performed well enough to earn her trust, so she let it loose on the real thing. She believes the larger volume of data triggered compaction -- a process where the context window grows too large and the agent begins summarizing and compressing its running instructions, potentially dropping ones the user considers critical. The agent may have reverted to its earlier toy-inbox behavior and skipped her last prompt telling it not to act. OpenClaw is an open-source AI agent designed to run as a personal assistant on local hardware.

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D.O.J. Sues U.C.L.A. After It Refused to Pay $1 Billion Fine

NY Times - mar, 02/24/2026 - 17:27
The Trump administration accused the university’s Los Angeles campus of not doing enough to curb antisemitism, months after the government tried to cut research money and demanded more than $1 billion.

Federal Judiciary Asks Congress to Give Over Control of Courthouses

NY Times - mar, 02/24/2026 - 17:19
In a letter to lawmakers, the courts’ policymaking body claimed that the General Services Administration, part of the executive branch, had been slow to make crucial repairs.

What to Know About the Cartels Operating in Mexico

NY Times - mar, 02/24/2026 - 16:20
Other criminal groups in Mexico may try to take advantage of the death of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, also known as El Mencho, who ran the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

New Datacentres Risk Doubling Great Britain's Electricity Use, Regulator Says

SlashDot - mar, 02/24/2026 - 16:00
The amount of power being sought by new datacentre projects in Great Britain would exceed the national current peak electricity consumption, according to an industry watchdog. From a report: Ofgem said about 140 proposed datacentre schemes, driven by use of artificial intelligence, could require 50 gigawatts of electricity -- 5GW more than the country's current peak demand. The figure was revealed in an Ofgem consultation on demand for new connections to the power grid. It pointed to a "surge in demand" for connection applications between November 2024 and June last year, with a significant number coming from datacentres. This has exceeded even the most ambitious forecasts. Meanwhile, new renewable energy projects are not being connected to the grid at the pace they are being built to help meet the government's clean energy targets by the end of the decade. Ofgem said the work required to connect surging numbers of datacentres could mean delays for other projects that are "critical for decarbonisation and economic growth." Datacentres are the central nervous system of AI tools such as chatbots and image generators, playing a vital role in training and operating products such as ChatGPT and Gemini.

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Mexico Is Caught Between Trump and the Cartels

NY Times - mar, 02/24/2026 - 15:46
President Trump has demanded President Claudia Sheinbaum confront the cartels. The killing of El Mencho suggests it might be working — but could come at a cost.

Providence, R.I. Digs Out From Three Feet of Snow

NY Times - mar, 02/24/2026 - 15:23
A day after the city got a record-breaking amount of snow, some residents clung to the magic. Others were gearing up for endless shoveling.

After Being Shoved in Front of a Train, He Has Returned to the Subway

NY Times - mar, 02/24/2026 - 15:00
Joseph Lynskey was determined to overcome his fear and reclaim his life as a New Yorker who enjoys the city in full. On Tuesday, he filed a lawsuit against the city and the M.T.A.

CrowdStrike Says Attackers Are Moving Through Networks in Under 30 Minutes

SlashDot - mar, 02/24/2026 - 15:00
An anonymous reader shares a report: Cyberattacks reached victims faster and came from a wider range of threat groups than ever last year, CrowdStrike said in its annual global threat report released Tuesday, adding that cybercriminals and nation-states increasingly relied on predictable tactics to evade detection by exploiting trusted systems. The average breakout time -- how long it took financially-motivated attackers to move from initial intrusion to other network systems -- dropped to 29 minutes in 2025, a 65% increase in speed from the year prior. "The fastest breakout time a year ago was 51 seconds. This year it's 27 seconds," Adam Meyers, head of counter adversary operations at CrowdStrike, told CyberScoop. Defenders are falling behind because attackers are refining their techniques, using social engineering to access high-privilege systems faster and move through victims' cloud infrastructure undetected.

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How Jeffrey Epstein Ingratiated Himself With Top Microsoft Executives

NY Times - mar, 02/24/2026 - 14:58
For more than two decades, the convicted sex offender developed a network at the tech giant, making him privy to succession discussions and other business.

Is It Safe to Travel to Mexico Right Now, Given the Cartel Violence?

NY Times - mar, 02/24/2026 - 14:19
A wave of unrest after the killing of a cartel leader has rattled tourists in Mexico, prompting travelers to reconsider their plans. Here’s what to know.

Hegseth Gives Anthropic Until Friday To Back Down on AI Safeguards

SlashDot - mar, 02/24/2026 - 14:00
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei until Friday evening to give the military unfettered access to its AI model or face harsh penalties, Axios has learned. Hegseth told Amodei in a tense meeting on Tuesday that the Pentagon will either cut ties and declare Anthropic a "supply chain risk," or invoke the Defense Production Act to force the company to tailor its model to the military's needs. The Pentagon wants to punish Anthropic as the feud over AI safeguards grows increasingly nasty, but officials are also worried about the consequences of losing access to its industry-leading model, Claude. "The only reason we're still talking to these people is we need them and we need them now. The problem for these guys is they are that good," a Defense official told Axios ahead of the meeting. Anthropic has said it is willing to adapt its usage policies for the Pentagon, but not to allow its model to be used for the mass surveillance of Americans or the development of weapons that fire without human involvement.

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Savannah Guthrie Offers $1 Million for Tip Leading to Mother’s Return

NY Times - mar, 02/24/2026 - 13:54
In a new video, the “Today” host acknowledged that her 84-year-old mother may already be dead, but said the family was holding out hope for a miracle.

The US Spent $30 Billion on Classroom Laptops and Got the First Generation Less Capable Than Its Parents

SlashDot - mar, 02/24/2026 - 13:01
More than two decades after Maine became the first state to hand laptops to middle schoolers -- distributing 17,000 Apple machines across 243 schools in 2002 -- neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath told a U.S. Senate committee earlier this year that Gen Z is the first generation in modern history to score lower on standardized tests than the one before it. The U.S. spent more than $30 billion in 2024 alone putting laptops and tablets in classrooms, and Horvath cited PISA data from 15-year-olds worldwide showing a stark correlation between time on school computers and worse scores. A 2014 study of 3,000 university students found they were off-task on their machines nearly two-thirds of the time. Fortune reported back in 2017 that Maine's own test scores hadn't budged in the 15 years since the program launched, and then-governor Paul LePage called it a "massive failure." Horvath framed the generation's eroding capabilities not as a personal failure but a policy one, calling them victims of a failed pedagogical experiment.

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Trump’s New Tariffs Are Illegal Too

NY Times - mar, 02/24/2026 - 12:24
Just another attempt to ignore the law and dare the courts to step in.

Microsoft Execs Worry AI Will Eat Entry Level Coding Jobs

SlashDot - mar, 02/24/2026 - 12:01
An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich and VP of Developer Community Scott Hanselman have written a paper arguing that senior software engineers must mentor junior developers to prevent AI coding agents from hollowing out the profession's future skills base. The paper, Redefining the Engineering Profession for AI, is based on several assumptions, the first of which is that agentic coding assistants "give senior engineers an AI boost... while imposing an AI drag on early-in-career (EiC) developers to steer, verify and integrate AI output." In an earlier podcast on the subject, Russinovich said this basic premise -- that AI is increasing productivity only for senior developers while reducing it for juniors -- is a "hot topic in all our customer engagements... they all say they see it at their companies." [...] The logical outcome is that "if organizations focus only on short-term efficiency -- hiring those who can already direct AI -- they risk hollowing out the next generation of technical leaders," Russinovich and Hanselman state in the paper.

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Billions of Dollars Later and Still Nobody Knows What an Xbox Is

SlashDot - mar, 02/24/2026 - 11:04
Microsoft has spent more than $76 billion acquiring game studios and publishers over the past few years in an attempt to turn Xbox into a Netflix-like subscription platform, and the result is that nobody -- possibly not even Microsoft -- can clearly articulate what Xbox actually is anymore, The Verge writes. The brand started as a powerful video game console, but Game Pass and cloud gaming pushed it toward a hazier identity: the "This is an Xbox" ad campaign tried to redefine it as any device that could play Xbox games, whether a PC, a smart TV, a phone, or a Windows handheld. Microsoft then went further and started publishing its biggest franchises on PlayStation, making it one of the largest third-party publishers on a rival's platform. Phil Spencer, who led the division for over a decade and drove the subscription pivot, announced his retirement last week, and incoming CEO Asha Sharma has pledged "the return of Xbox" -- though her memo also talks about expanding across PC, mobile, and cloud, which sounds a lot like the status quo.

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Discord Distances Itself From Persona Age Verification After User Backlash

SlashDot - mar, 02/24/2026 - 10:00
Discord is attempting to distance itself from the age verification provider Persona following a steady stream of user backlash. From a report: In an emailed statement to The Verge, Discord's head of product policy, Savannah Badalich, confirms the company "ran a limited test of Persona in the UK where age assurance had previously launched and that test has since concluded." After Discord announced plans to implement age verification globally starting next month, users across social media accused Discord of "lying" about how it plans on handling face scans and ID uploads. Much of the criticism was directed toward Discord's partnership with Persona, an age verification provider also used by Reddit and Roblox.

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